Chaos is not utter confusion. Chaos is constrained, rather than explosive instability.

-Ralph Stacey

Creating Personal & Organizational Futures

Giving Individuals and Organizations the Confidence to Take the Next Step

The future cannot be predicted; however, we believe that by understanding how we arrived at the present and by articulating our wishes for the future, people and organizations can construct meaningful plans that will give them the confidence to take the next step.

Chaos Management provides two types of planning processes that focus on the future. Mapping Your Future helps individual think deeply about their lives and careers, giving them a compass to guide their decisions. Future Search Conference is a collaborative planning process that enables organizations to create the future they want.

Mapping Your Future: A Personal Retreat

Where are you going in your life and career?
At times, we find ourselves questioning what we are doing and where we are headed. We instinctively feel we could be getting more out of our lives. We may be thinking about a new career, be in transition, or facing retirement. At the major turning points in life you need a good sense of direction. You need to be able to identify the resources and find the support necessary to achieve your life goals.

Mapping Your Future offers a structured approach to achieving more focus and clarity about where you are going in your life. Together, we help you map the future you want. During the retreat you will:

Grasp the “big picture”—the variety of personal, local, and global trends that are impacting your life
Understand interconnectedness—how your life and work are intertwined and what it means
Draw a compass of your life that is based on your values and gives direction to your future
Commit yourself to shaping your life based on your own personal compass
Kick-start your action plan for change

Who’s got the map to your future?
Join us as we explore your future and how to get there. The Mapping Your Future retreat is a day and a half, and takes place in a charming, rural Brattleboro, Vermont setting that offers a unique opportunity for intense inquiry and quiet reflection.

How do I register?
Registration fee of $195 includes workshop materials, dinner Friday, lunch Saturday, and refreshments. For more information or to register contact James Cumming at (802) 257-2729 or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

Future Search Conference for Organizations
A Participatory Strategic Planning Process

In many business meetings 80% of the time is spent on 20% of the problems. Future Search helps businesses, communities, and non-profits achieve new levels of performance. A typical Future Search Conference builds a shared portrait of past, present, and desired future, where participants confirm their common ground and plan actions together. What makes Future Search so effective is a full exploration of the “whole elephant” before acting on any part of it. Future Search encourages task-focused cooperation by treating problems and conflicts as vital information, not action agendas.

Future Search enables people to work together no matter how they differ in status, specialty, education, job, gender, race, or ethnicity. In fact, the more diverse the group, the more successful the meeting. What makes Future Search different is the commitment to a creative strategic planning process that engenders high trust and commitment to implementation, while meeting the wishes of people everywhere for dignity, meaning, and wholeness in work.

People use Future Search to create
Partnerships across departments and divisions within large corporations
Network integration among groups doing similar tasks
Long-term strategic plans with high commitment to implementation
Cross-cultural visions and action plans
Work systems redesigns
New strategies and forms of cooperation in changing markets
Cooperation between union and management
Customer and supplier involvement in company planning
Public/private partnerships
Merger acquisition implementation

Outcomes of our work in this area include
Helping people think strategically
Increased collaboration across differences
More confidence to face the future in a principled way

Chaos Management’s systems perspective enables us to manage the complexity of this collaborative strategic planning process at the macro and micro levels. We have conducted future searches for small and large groups in a global context—for the U.N., in Vietnam, Honduras, and Colombia, as well as in the U.S. We can facilitate conferences in English and Spanish.

James Cumming, Director of Chaos Management, Ltd., is a founding member of Future Search Network. See Future Search Conference articles by Chaos Management under "Related Items" above.

 
 
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© Chaos Management, Ltd.
PO Box 737
Brattleboro VT 05302 USA
Tel: (802) 257-2729
[email protected]

 

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